Ado/Backstory
Age 28 No matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t get the damned thing to make a pretty sound. Ado dropped his ocarina with a sigh, letting the cord around his neck catch its fall. He’d had the thing since his father and mother were supposedly killed by a demon when he was eleven – he couldn’t really recall much of the incident. One would think that after 17 years worth of pathetic attempts at music he’d be able to do more with it than summon shit from the sky as the local birds flew away in fright – or annoyance, he could never really tell. Despite how frustrating it was, Ado still wore the blasted thing every day. It was, after all, the only thing he had left of his previous life. Life before Rhea found him. A young girl had stumbled into the ruins of his house and found him unconscious under his mother’s body. For some reason, she stood in the way between him and a painful death by fire at the hands of enough angry villagers to make a demon reconsider. He found himself under her care and under the care of her family. And as fate may have it, she fell in love. Now, Ado was a happily married father of two. He worked the fields while Rhea cared for their newborn, and occasionally, he went into to town to sell his craft to the church. For all their talk of selflessness and desire, those old fellows always had extra money in the pockets for a few barrels of his strongest brew. Come to think of it, it was about time he headed back. The sun was already starting to set and he still had a few carboys primed for the barrel. Standing from his favorite perch – a fallen tree out in the middle of the fields – Ado swung his scythe over his shoulder and headed back towards the house. This was his favorite part of his day. Rhea would be standing on the back porch, her blue eyes shining in the light of dusk, with Antony on her hip, most likely asleep. Cera would wait until she could see him coming, and then insist on meeting him halfway just so she could catch a ride on his shoulder back to the house. He led a simple life, and lived for simple things. As long as his family had food on the table every evening and Rhea could sing her gleeman’s stories to the kids before bed, Ado would never change a thing. He couldn’t see the house yet, but he could see the smoke from Rhea’s cooking over the hilltop. He really should get her a gift. She always says she doesn’t care about things like that, but he’d still caught her eyeing the jewelry on the gleeman’s cart when he came into town. The gleeman never stayed for long though. Just enough to spread the new gossip, deliver mail and notices from the larger cities. Then before you knew it, he’d be off on his merry way, spreading his gossip and wares to the next village over. To each their own, his old man had always said. He had said things like that lot. Like they were facts of life or something. It was one of the only things he could remember about him. He wasn’t sure why, but saying them aloud was becoming more of a habit than he cared to – The flames licking the sides of his home did not slow him down as he ran through the gaping hole that was once his back door. The kitchen inside was aflame. Ado quickly scanned the room, finding nothing visibly amiss – excluding the flames of course. He made his way into the center of the house to find an enormous black shadow hunched over the unmoving form of his wife. Ado released an unearthly snarl and charged, scythe in hand. The shadowy form turned – seemingly annoyed by his intrusion, and Ado was frozen in place. Not from anything he could see. He simply could not approach the dark. . . thing. In fact, he wanted to run screaming in the other direction with every fiber of his being. But Rhea needed him and he held his ground. The form vanished into the undulating shadows cast by the flames. Ado dropped to his knees as his mind was wracked with sounds mortal men should not hear. He clawed at his own eyes and screamed. ----------------------------------------------------------------- After what seemed like eons, a small hand reached for him and he froze. Looking up, he saw the tear-filled eyes of a young human girl. She began to cry and threw herself into him. Ado reach out his arms and caught her, crushing her throat with his hands. He threw 40 pounds of limp flesh to the side as he rose to his feet. Rising, he stepped towards the mirror – one of the only adornments of any taste in the room – to appraise his current features. His light hair was singed and his tanned skin was torn around his throat and eyes. His eyes. His eyes glowed bright against the drab grays that filled the rest of his vision. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Ado looked into the mirror and tried to scream. Tried to do anything. He could feel Cera’s skin under his nails and he wanted to vomit. His head turned back to her body and paused admiringly at the reflection the flames playing on his scythe’s blade next to the small form of his daughter, limp on the floor. He grimaced and slammed his head into the mirror. The hot blood on his face was small recompense for pain to follow. ----------------------------------------------------------------- The muscles in his arms swelled and the skin tore at the burns around his neck. Ado watched himself smile through the broken and bloody shards of the mirror, ripping the ocarina from his neck. He strode over to the scythe lying on the floor, kicking away a pile of flesh and cloth that impeded his path. He turned to his beautiful wife – who started to move as an incredibly small human crawled out from under her form – this one was not crying. The beautiful woman stood, and Ado watched. She truly was a stunning specimen. He took a step forward and the woman screamed. She held her arms aloft and began speaking in a tongue he did not understand – he took special note of her speech, as he intended to learn it later should it prove useful. She faced him and a pale light emerged from her eyes and hands. Ado took another step forward as his vision clouded. His body was not following his commands. He could feel his soul being forced out of his body. Pity. He raised his scythe. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Screams pierced his soul as Ado cleaved Rhea and his son in half. Everything went black. When Ado awoke, he sat amongst the burnt ruins of his home. He dug through the rubble looking for something – he wasn’t sure what exactly, but he desperately needed it. He cut his hand on a broken shard of glass and paused as he held it aloft. His eyes didn’t look right. His normally bright blue eyes were not his own. In their place was a small pupil surrounded by a large iris of bright gray. He didn’t have time to consider this now. He had to find it – whatever it was. A few feverish hours later, he overturned a medium-sized ale barrel – one meant for his upcoming trip to town. It was somehow still pristine, it’s wax sealing not even melted. His eyes filled with tears and he wept. “Rhea,” he was able to say aloud. A few years later, Ado left his home with the scythe he murdered his wife over his shoulder, and a very important ale barrel strapped to his back.